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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24465592">I'm Not Face Blind, The World's Just Blinding Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples'>gala_apples</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shameless (US), The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>EMT Ian Gallagher, First Kiss, Fraud, Ian and Klaus are the same age, M/M, Manic Ian Gallagher, Open Marriage, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Psych Ward, Recreational Drug Use, Referenced Sex Work, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05, Season/Series 10, Time Shift</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:26:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,077</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24465592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times that Ian Gallagher met Klaus Hargreeves for the first time, and one time that Mickey met him too.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ian Gallagher/Klaus Hargreeves, Ian Gallagher/Klaus Hargreeves/Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I'm Not Face Blind, The World's Just Blinding Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the prompt 'once is never enough' for my Shameless prompt table.</p><p>I'm a mentally ill, genderqueer, polyamorous recreational drug user with family and religion issues. Shameless and The Umbrella Academy hit my psyche in basically the same way, both top tier shows. Literally how could I not ship Ian and Klaus? Impossible. Except of course Mickey is a delight too, so I can't leave him out.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1)<br/>
Just after Ian’s twelfth birthday, someone calls DCFS on Frank for Debbie fainting at school. When they do the home visit they realise she hasn’t eaten in days, that none of them have. Fiona’s between paychecks and despite various schemes to get free food it’s been a single meal a day kind of month. It’s enough to get them booted to foster care again. </p><p>The caseworker splits them up four ways this time. Fiona by herself, no doubt going to a young adult care home so she can get lectures about going back to school and going to college from do-gooders so privileged they can afford to take care of strangers. Lip and Debbie both get their own placements, fourteen year old boys and eight year old girls drawing different prospective parents. And Ian and Carl go to Mr and Mrs Gavelston.</p><p>It’s bad. It’s a really fucking bad place to be, and two days in Ian uses his best judgement and gets Carl to pack up his worn out Transformers backpack so they can go live under a bridge for a few days. Lip and Fiona would have done the same thing, Ian’s sure. They’d be proud of him, doing this.</p><p>Ian keeps telling himself that as the days go on. It’s important to remind himself he’s doing the right thing, because it’s hard. It’s scary. Sleeping outside in late September is cold, you have to go to sleep in parkas and beanies. Some of the other people sleeping here are on really bad drugs, the kind of shit Frank does except they don’t even need to pretend at humanity or routine. He’s still not getting himself or Carl much food, and now he can’t even ask Chris to share his sandwich at lunch, because if he goes back to school his caseworker will find out. Ian can’t reveal them until it’s likely that Frank’s got them back.</p><p>The evening of the morning Ian has to defend himself with a can of tuna shoved in a sock to get his parka back, a boy his age approaches him. It raises Ian’s guard immediately. This part of the bridge hosts only older individuals, no families or teenagers, except him and Carl. What’s he doing here, what does he <i>want</i>, Ian will absolutely hit him with the same makeshift mace.</p><p>What he wants is to buy some weed. Ian doesn’t have any on him, of course. Fiona and Lip do, and he’s tried it a few times, but with both his older siblings telling him he’s still too young and not sharing, Ian’s got no steady source. Telling the boy that doesn’t make him go away though.</p><p>“I didn’t say you could sit here,” Ian says. This is his and Carl’s cardboard. If this pretty boy tries to take any, he’ll punch his pretty upside down raindrop face.</p><p>“Shut up. I like it here. Not a lot of people have died here. Nothing messy, even, just ODs.”</p><p>Ian frowns. Maybe this kid is from a street with a lot of drive bys? South Wallace isn’t too bad with that, it’s mostly fist fights and rowdy dumb shit after public intoxication. What would it hurt to let him stay? And the longer he does stay, the longer Ian has to look at him. He’s got pale skin, and fluffy black hair, and he’s wearing a necklace. Not like a shark’s tooth on cord, a bright coloured thing that looks like the jewelry Debbie wanted them to shoplift her from Claires for her eighth birthday. Ian really likes looking at him. He’s prettier than any of the girls in sixth grade.</p><p>He doesn’t stay too long. It’s not like Ian has a watch or anything, but the shadows and sunlight haven’t changed by the time the boy stands up, telling Ian nonsensically that it’s time to go face those beheaded by the tentacles, is he sure he doesn’t have any weed. </p><p>“Believe it or not, I don’t now magically have it,” Ian says. He’s had enough practice with his parents and their friends to not get scared at someone having a hallucination in front of him, unless they want to hurt him because of it. </p><p>The boy mock salutes him. It’s annoying that he’s making fun of it, when Ian’s desperately looking forward to joining the ROTC in high school. “Off to face the family business.”</p><p>The pale boy leaves and Ian refocuses his attention on Carl graffitting the wall with a blue paint can a previous tagger had left behind. In the future he’ll forget this moment, when he realised a boy as pretty as a girl is interesting, instead of just liking how his crush Carrie Yatzel looks kind of like a boy. By the time he comes out to Lip, his ‘first gay moment’ trivia will be stamped with Roger Donkey Dick Spikey. But for twenty minutes in the middle of an awful afternoon in an awful week, Ian gets to be happy looking at a pretty boy.</p><p> </p><p>2)<br/>
Ian’s pretty sure he’s about to witness a robbery. He’s sitting on a parking median outside a gas station and Frank is taking way too long. He’s been acting suspicious the whole day really, the least of which being asking Ian for a father son day. It was so fucking stupid of him to agree. Even if he’s got some personal shit to talk to Frank about, he should have realized today wouldn’t be on his terms, but Frank’s. Ever since Monica ran off after delivering Liam, everything’s been about Frank.</p><p>What is the point of being here, he wonders. If he was idling in a getaway car, it’d make sense. Or even if Frank had dragged him inside and used him as better odds, see who the owner chased once they both started running. But he’s just sitting in the pavement, so what’s the fucking point besides giving him anxiety and wasting his Saturday? He should be applying for jobs right now. Formula doesn’t come cheap, and who knows when Monica will come back.</p><p>Things ramp up about thirty seven notches when Ian sees not one but three Umbrella Academy kids come walking up. They’re in uniform, with the mask and knee socks and everything. Two go inside and one stays outside. Ian thinks it’s the fighting one and the knives one, but he’s not certain. He doesn’t follow the news much, not anymore. The closest they come to a newspaper is when nine year Debbie runs the block to steal coupons.</p><p>Ian throws his hands up into the air. “Please don’t rip me apart with your tentacles. I’m not part of this. I didn’t know he was gonna rob it, or do whatever it is he’s doing.”</p><p>“What? Oh no, Red. You’ve confused me with someone who cares.”</p><p>“You’re Umbrella Academy.”</p><p>The boy scoffs. “I’m Four. My power is useless in every situation and the sooner daddy dearest stops dragging me into this shit the better. Look out, my ass.”</p><p>“At least your dad drags you into law abiding shit. My dad’s in there about to get knives thrown at him because he’s a moron.”</p><p>“He’ll probably only get a little bit stabbed. Some reporter wrote a piece about the Academy never helping in disenfranchised neighbourhoods. It’ll mess up Sir’s retaliatory publicity grab if Two gets too stabby or Five on beta team snaps someone’s neck.”</p><p>Huh. Yeah, Ian probably should have realized it’s mostly a show. If they really cared about serving the community they’d be junior cadets in a police program, or ROTC prepping to fight for America. Be the leaders of their units, strong superpowered back bones, not shiny ornaments on tv. </p><p>“Anyway, you’re cute and we’ve got probably ten minutes until the cameras start coming. Wanna make out?”</p><p>Ian’s thought about making out with boys a lot. Like with every boy in his grade, a lot. He’s accepted at this point that he’s super gay. He was even gonna maybe ask Frank about it, since Frank definitely sometimes blows guys for drinking money. But no one from school is out. There are a few obvious fag and dyke targets, kids with the wrong haircuts and personalities. And there are rumours about Lip’s fuck buddy Karen, that she’ll do <i>anything</i> with a girl to impress a guy. That’s different than happily out people though. Ian doesn’t know if Four is publicly out, he’d think he’d remember a gay superhero, but he’s out enough to ask a boy to kiss him during a robbery and in Ian’s book that counts. </p><p>Is he available to be kissed and is he attractive enough to be kissed are two different slivers of the same question. The domino mask obscures most of Four’s face, so it’s hard to fully tell, but he’s skinny and tall and has nice black hair and shiny white teeth. Even if he was ugly under the mask he’s still the only boy who’s ever asked Ian for a kiss. So what else can Ian say?</p><p>“Hell yeah.”</p><p>It’s hard at first, knowing exactly how to place his lips, what to do with his hands. Ian’s half listened to Lip’s birds and bees lecture, picked up the rare helpful tidbit between the mountains of inapplicable shit, but there’s a difference between hearing it and living it. It goes well though, Ian thinks. Four’s breath smells like orange tic tacs and whiskey, but he tastes only like the tic tacs, so it’s not like kissing someone at The Alibi.</p><p>It sucks, knowing that he’ll have to keep this all a secret when he goes home. He’ll make up an easy lie, like he booked it before Frank got arrested. Frank’s not going to be coherent enough to notice two Umbrella Academy in the store, three at arrest, and no one will expect Ian to know any details. When Ian was younger he could tell Lip anything. Not now though. Lip’s his brother, but he’s South Side, falling into the role deeper every day with Monica gone and Fiona having just dropped out. It’s only gonna get worse if Frank’s in jail for ninety days. Ian can’t risk losing brotherly support over his dumb orientation. He’ll keep it to himself, thank you very much. </p><p>Which isn’t to say Ian won’t be thinking about it constantly. It was a really good, really hot first kiss, from a presumably hot boy. It’s about to be a hot second kiss, and however many after that in the brief window before the reporters come. Who knows, maybe he’ll have a uniform kink for the rest of his life, thanks to Four.</p><p> </p><p>3)<br/>
Ian doesn’t blame Ned for kicking him out. Everest and Vikky were being stupid and shit got broken. Of course he’d be mad. Lucky for him Monica was in the city, easy to track down and willing to share some tips about how to squat safely. Frank and Monica both have the street smarts for this kind of living, but Monica is nicer to be around. She took him to a gay club. Frank’s never taken him to a gay club. He didn’t even promise to not tell anyone about him and Mickey when Ian needed him to. Plus Frank’s probably still around the house. Right now no one’s talking to Monica, so he’s safe with his privacy.</p><p>Not that he stays at their squat much. There’s a lot of couch and bed surfing to be had by rolling around with the last guy at the party. Ian doesn’t have a lot of friends at Fairy Tail. They’re mostly rivals, really. It’s every lap dancer and cock sucker for himself, and any customer that one employee gets is a customer and tips the others don’t. It doesn’t stop him from hanging out after work though. There’s a culture in gay sex work that he sure as fuck didn’t experience closeted with Kash or Mickey. Makes him feel <i>alive</i>. Not only that, the men are kind. Nearly every afterparty Ian manages to find himself a place to crash, and if he’s lucky that includes alcohol or drugs or sex.</p><p>Tonight’s party is winding down. It’s him, the host, and two or three others guys. Zeus from work, his boyfriend of the week, and a real femme twink, a tall skinny guy in a skirt with painted nails. Fingernails and toenails, Ian can tell because he’s bare foot.</p><p>Worse than cock blocking him -essentially impossible, there’s always another man who wants him- the femme is shelter blocking him. Grant would have let Ian crawl into his bed for the night. Shit, he probably would have made hot French pastry in the morning. And to be fair to the femme, Grant probably would have slept with him too. But Grant’s too vanilla for a threesome, and given two options it’s too difficult to pick. By four am he’s kicking them both out. </p><p>They stand beside each other, waiting for the elevator. If they were five floors lower, Ian would considering running the stairs, but they’re a few floors from the top of this high rise apartment. He needs to save his energy for making his way back to the squat. </p><p>“You’re such a cock block,” he bitches. Rule number one, be careful about admitting to needing a place to stay. It can look desperate, and the kind of men attracted to desperate sheep can be shepherds or wolves.</p><p>“I am rubber, you are glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks you.” He breaks off with a jittery high pitched and rising laugh.</p><p>Ian has a decade of practice with annoying younger siblings. He knows when to fight back and when it’s easier to not say anything. A methed out twink isn’t worth it.</p><p>They’re halfway down to ground floor when the femme turns to look at him. “Okay, so what was your back up? Because mine was sleep on a park bench until my brother finds me and starts yelling at me.”</p><p>“I feel you so much, my friend.” Ian curls his arm around this newly interesting guy. It just goes to show you, you can make a connection with anyone as long as you keep trying. “Me too. My brother too. Except not really, because he doesn’t actually know I’m voluntarily homeless. But if he did he’d yell, which is why I’m not telling him. I don’t know where he is right now, actually. I bet he picked the best college and is busy curing diseases. Not that he’s majoring in medicine. I respect people who major in medicine, I learned field medic stuff in Basic and it was fascinating, but Lip would never go for it. He wants to be an inventor, make the next world changing concept. Lip is brilliant. He’s going to do something great.”</p><p>“You have a lot to say, man. Are you on coke? Do you <i>have</i> coke? Can I have some coke?”</p><p>“I don’t have any on me, but the club I work at will.”</p><p>It’s set then, as obvious as a signed and notarized contract. To hell with looking for a place to rest, they’re going to get some coke and stay up all night, walking the city. Just like Ian was raised to. The thing Ian’s siblings don’t want to admit is that Frank and Monica are fun. Sure maybe some things get a bit out of hand sometimes, Ian can’t say they don’t. But they make tons of friends, they have tons of adventures and sometimes they get to see colours that don’t exist or feel their skin undulate like waves on the shore. There are worse traits to emulate. Ian doesn’t know this man’s life story, but maybe he’s living up to someone too. Maybe he’ll find out tonight. Coke makes you pretty talkative.</p><p>Fairy Tail is a 24 hour club. Ian’s a top earner, so he gets the best shift. By comparison, this five am crew is not looking too hot. A few businessmen are in, getting their morning rocks off before heading for Wall Street, or whatever it’s called in Chicago. He’s had a few thousand dollar watch wearers tell him their financial plan, the best thing they have to brag about, but it’s not the kind of fact that sticks in his brain. Ian slips past all of them to go to the change room. </p><p>When his business is done, Ian goes back to the floor. He finds the femme twirling in the middle of the dance floor, big boots no doubt scuffing the wax. Ian curls into him, stopping his twirl to make them sway together. </p><p>“You ever think about making some extra money screwing the men that are a little less sad?”</p><p>“Two steps ahead of you, Delilah.” Obviously not the femme’s real name, but Ian is Curtis here, so he understands the misnaming. “I recommend always having Skittles on you. It takes the taste away, and chewing a handful helps work your jaw back into place.”</p><p>“Good tip. I usually fuck so I can use a condom without them bitching, but Skittles sound yummy.”</p><p>Ian glides his arms down from where they’re wrapped around Delilah’s chest. He tucks one of the baggies of coke in the waistband of his skirt, and keeps his hand moving until he stops it on Delilah’s hips. He doesn’t know what he’ll be doing in an hour, or where he’ll be, but he knows that right now this man feels heavenly against him. It’s all that matters.</p><p> </p><p>4)<br/>
Ian wakes up.</p><p>It doesn’t feel like waking up.</p><p>Ian wakes up to three other people in bunkbeds around him, and a man with a cart walking into his room. It’s not the weirdest thing he’s woken up to in the last year, but he feels foggy as he tries to sit up. He needs to do what he always does when he wakes up in a strange situation; gather information.</p><p>Everything Ian learns makes the situation worse. He’s in the Cook County Psych Ward. He has an appointment to see a doctor in the afternoon. He’s been sedated. His clothes have been stolen, and he can’t go home for three days.</p><p>They’re all looking at him. Not the fun way of looking, like at the Fairy Tail where everyone wants him and for fifty bucks he’ll want them back before going home to Mickey and Svetlana and Yevgeny. This is <i>bad</i> looking. He’d tell them to stop, if he wasn’t so tired. He’s really tired.</p><p>No one cares that he’s tired. They make him get up and get dressed and go for breakfast. He tries to leave, but some guy shoves him against the wall and calls him names, and Ian’s spent enough time around violent drug users, power trippers, and bullies to know when to turn meek. He says he’ll go eat french toast and the man lets him go. After sitting at the table, they make him put away his dishes. Then he has to go have a shower. A man watches him. It doesn’t make him hard to be watched, which is strange. It isn’t until Fiona and Mickey go that he can finally rest.</p><p>When Ian wakes up next there’s only one man in the shared room. He’s got black curly hair and a fuzzy pink knit cardigan on top of his psych ward uniform. He probably needs it for warmth, he’s so skinny. He’s Fiona skinny, when the squirrel fund was smaller and she ate last. He’s schizophrenic probably. He’s having a full conversation with nobody. Ian can’t bring himself to ask if he’s okay. Words are tiring. They stick in his mouth like a softball sized cotton ball.</p><p>It’s still hard to talk when he has his doctor’s appointment. The only way he burns through the haze a little is because he’s so frustrated. He’s not Monica, he doesn’t have a mental disorder just because he’s done a few weird things the last few days. He didn’t even hurt Yevgeny, he’s a better person than Fiona nearly killing Liam. He doesn’t need to be here. This is stupid, and exhausting.</p><p>Despite the exhaustion, after the orderly calls curfew and the lights turn off, Ian can’t sleep. He paces, rubbing the wall with the closer hand for each direction. They’re all looking at him again. He doesn’t care. He needs to feel something that's real, not just this suffocating smothering feeling like he's trapped under a hundred soaking wet blankets. If he could just find a single edge, maybe he could get out of this and get back to normal, get back to scheming with Mickey. He thinks Mickey might have visited, but it’s hard to remember through the fog. If he did, and Ian was the way he feels now, Mickey probably felt sad. Ian needs to get back to normal so he can make Mickey happy.</p><p>“Come here,” the voice whispers. Ian can’t tell who at first, but then the curly haired man is sitting up and gesturing at him. “Com’mere.” </p><p>Ian staggers over, body not timed correctly to deal with responses, like when a YouTube video lags and misfires and suddenly the video doesn’t match the audio. Curly Hair spreads his legs into a v, as far as the white metal railings of the institutional bed will let him, and pats the mattress. </p><p>“Come on. We’ll talk, we’ll get through the night, we’ll be six hours closer to the end of the hold.”</p><p>There’s enough of the old Ian left in him that affection might make him normal. Ian sits with his back to Curly Hair, though he quickly begins to slump. These pills are terrible. He went from never tired to always tired. At a certain point Curly Hair begins carding his fingers through Ian’s hair. It’s nice, he thinks. He can’t <i>feel</i> that it’s nice, but he knows that if he was normal he’d like it so he doesn’t make him stop in case it helps. He wonders if this is what Karen felt like, dumb and numb and suffocated. He was happy about it at the time, happy for Lip to finally be able to get away from her. Is this all karma? If he admits he’s been a bad person, can he switch punishments?</p><p>Ian slouches further as Curly Hair continues to non-stop talk, trying to force himself to feel normal against the pills deadening him.</p><p>“You try to tell people the truth, about the girls with the ripped out intestines, I think it was an angry pimp thing, or a serial killer? What number means serial? There were at least four. You try to tell the officer they’re standing right there right behind him, so if you could please just have this conversation the next block over that’d be great, and next thing you know they’re committing you.”</p><p>It’s not a very nice bedtime story. Ian has memories of Lip reading to him. Monica too. He wants them here. He reads to Yevgeny. He wants to go home. He wants to pick Yev up and read him If You Give A Moose A Muffin, because funny kids books are the best. Ian doesn’t want to be here anymore.</p><p> </p><p>5)<br/>
Ian hates this job more than he thinks he’s ever hated anything before, ever. There’s no okay aspect of it. From heartless dead eyed coworkers, to committing crimes constantly while on probation, to being weak enough to accept blackmail, it’s all shit. Like that scene from the Grinch movie that comes on cable every Christmas, when he’s flipping through the phone book and yelling at each name. Hate, hate, hate, hate, loathe entirely. </p><p>It’s not like Ian hasn’t been in shitty situations before. He’s a Gallagher. He’s been in dozens. Funny enough, prison comes to mind right quick. All those other times though, there’s been at least one thing he can control. Frank punches him in the face unprovoked? Smoke up with Lip and rant about wanting to kill him. Foster family tries to pray the gay away? Lose his virginity to Roger Spikey. </p><p>But this? There’s nothing to be done. Ian tried to even just help occasional people in addition to the insurance fraud and nearly got his dick bitten off by a Doberman. He can’t do anything. It makes him feel fucking weak. Shit, even Kash, one of the weakest people he knows, eventually walked away from his domineering blackmailing wife. He’s lower than a man with no spine. It’s awful. And it’s fucking with his mind. It’s making him want to go off his meds. He won’t. He can’t. But he wants to. When he’s in that sweet spot of manic before the hallucinations and paranoia kick in, he can think a thousand thoughts, fight a thousand battles and fuck a thousand men all before a normal person sneezes. It’s false confidence, so say the doctors and his family, and he remembers how annoying it was to be on the other side of it, with Monica, but it’s tempting. Every day he comes to work it’s more tempting.</p><p>Eric pulls the ambulance to a stop in front of a homeless encampment. About three false reports in, a man in a leather jacket, jean shorts on top of tribal print yoga pants, and mismatching flip flops staggers onto the bus, bleeding from the scalp. </p><p>“Maybe let a different ambulance get him? It looks like we’d have to provide actual care here. Wouldn’t want that.” Is Ian bitter enough to sour a tub of icing? Yes. But any time he can needle one of his garbage coworkers is ten seconds of relief from the seething hatred leaking from his pores. </p><p>“What? Nah. Ben’s a cash cow. He’s got a real reputation in this town. Gets picked up for OD plus various stupidity every week. We could charge any emergency procedure and they’d believe it from him.”</p><p>Jesus. There’s only so much sympathy Ian can have for a junkie, but he’s always good with them, real life parlaying nicely to a career. However much empathy Ian might have mustered up on his old rig, it was more than this, milking people to abuse the system. Ben’s actually injured, and it makes Ian feel like garbage.</p><p>More important than starting the stitches, Ian grabs the penlight and shines it in Ben’s eyes. His pupils are equally reactive, thank shit. Do his coworkers even know directions to the nearest hospital is a question Ian’s scared to have answered.</p><p>“Ben, can you tell me what happened? Ben?” There’s no recognition in the patient’s glazed over face. “You sure his name is Ben?”</p><p>Camilla shrugs. “I heard him say Ben a few times while tripping. The insurance company’s got his real info, we get paid. What’s it matter, Sparky?”</p><p>Yeah, what’s it matter treating people like humans and using their real names? If Ian wasn’t such a coward he’d go off his meds and burn this all down to the ground. One thing that can be said for Monica, she always got shit done, made big moves. She hit Frank with her car, she got Franny back for Debbie, she scored them a big inheritance in meth. Maybe he’d be better off, being more like her.</p><p> </p><p>+1<br/>
The truth of their relationship is that they’ve never really been monogamous. First Mickey was also fucking girls from the South Side, and fucking boys in juvie, leaving Ian pining even as he too fucked other guys. Then Ian was hypersexual, Mickey aware and still loving him. Then he cheated on Trevor to be with him. And let’s not forget Byron and Cole. The longest they’ve ever gone monogamous was prison, and half of that was spent miserable and willing to shiv people to get away from each other. Having a conversation about sleeping with other people is harder than just sleeping with other people, but they’re married now, they can be mature and talk. </p><p>They come up with some solid rules. Only together, all involved threesomes, not just one of them sneaking off with some guy. Only up to four times with the same man, less preferable unless he’s perfect in bed. Only at hotels or the guy’s place, not in their home. Lastly, if they’re mid-something and one of them wants to bail, the other is allowed to finish first before following, no repercussions.</p><p>In practice, it works. It’s exhilarating, the combination of lust and jealousy. Seeing Mickey kiss another man is like heated daggers running their points across Ian’s skin. When he kisses another man Mickey gets grabby afterwards, handsy to prove who he belongs to. No wonder Ve and Kev and Svetlana are back together for a third time. There’s just something about it that monogamy can’t compare to.</p><p>Lip and Debbie probably have things to say about it, both in committed relationships with Tami and Sandy, but one of the best things about being a Gallagher is ignoring advice you don’t want to take. What Lip and Tami have is nice, it’s good for them, but it’s never going to be what Ian aspires to. Tami and Lip are constantly pushing at each other to be stronger, smarter, more moral. Better. Ian loves Mickey for his strengths and flaws, and finds great comfort in knowing his husband loves him for who he is too, not who he should be.</p><p>Tonight the man who swiped right in their couples profile on Grindr is named Klaus. Ian likes the dark hair and pale skin. Mickey’s into his height and big hands. He’s good eye candy for the both of them.</p><p>They’ve danced enough to know they like the way Klaus moves, and talked over drinks enough to know they’re not hooking up with a serial killer cannibal. Which means now it’s time to ask the important question. “Your place, or a hotel?”</p><p>“Yours off the table?”</p><p>“Yes.” Even if they did want to breach their previously established boundaries, Ian is not marching this guy -or any- past Carl and Debbie and Franny and Liam. Fiona did her best to survive with the tools she had, and trust him, Ian gets sexuality and sexual relief being a form of self soothing, but Ian spent a solid chunk of his formative years staying awake with Lip waiting until the noises stopped and the date of the evening went home, thus proving some gross guy hadn’t raped and murdered their sister. He’s not giving that same experience to everyone in the house younger than him.</p><p>“Hotel then,” Klaus says. “Mine’s out too. My siblings would drive you away screaming and rending your flesh before you got your socks off.”</p><p>“Doubt it,” Mickey says in his normal flat tone. “We have pretty fuckin’ fucked up families.” </p><p>“Oh? Have any of you written a book selling out everyone’s secrets?”</p><p>“No,” Ian answers. It seems like a Debs kind of thing to do for money. Of all of them, Debbie ended up the one being the most ruthless for money, the definite underdog choice when compared to Lip’s schemes and Carl’s thug phase. But there’s no money in reporting the lives of South Side trash. Makes him wonder if Klaus is Chicago famous, the son of a newscaster or something, to have secrets worth selling.</p><p>“Any of you slice the throat of a sibling?”</p><p>“Carl put landmines in the lawn, but no one got hurt.”</p><p>“Stabbed, but not throat slit,” Mickey says. Ian considers adding how he nearly beat his dad to death at his baby’s christening, but holds off. It’s not always a good thing to bring up Yevgeny, Mickey’s feelings understandably mixed. Better to not mention him during the countdown to their threesome.</p><p>“Last chance... anyone’s brother and sister fucking? No? I win. What’s my prize, Ian Milkovich, Mickey Gallagher?”</p><p>If unfortunately gained children are a sore topic, incest in the Milkovich family is definitely sorer. Ian takes the easy change in topic, replies “you win a free hotel room for a night. Ready to claim it?”</p><p>Unsurprisingly, Klaus is indeed ready. There is <i>some</i> business left before they can get to pleasure. Coat check, because January in Chicago doesn’t tend towards flirty sexy clothing. They’re tipsy enough to need an Uber, but sober enough to have a hotel room successfully booked by the time they arrive at said hotel. And then they have to make their way to the room and strip down to underwear. Ian loves seeing Mickey in his boxers, has a handful of lush memories of going to fuck him for a second time in a day and peeling flannel away from where it’s stuck to dried lube. Klaus is wearing an obnoxious bikini cut pair, just enough spandex fabric to scream ‘look at my cock’. In comparison to both Ian could think himself boring in boxer briefs, except that’s false modesty. He was a stripper for a year, he knows he’s hot.</p><p>Ian locates the mini bar then pops it open for Mickey and Klaus. He’s not going to drink anymore, the med contraindications will have him hammered with one mini bottle. But Mickey likes a good drink, and it affects him like a normal person. Normal for someone who’s been drinking since single digits, that is, ie: he could probably swallow the whole mini bar before he started seeing blurry.</p><p>Except when he turns back to his husband and their guest, they’re already making out. Mickey’s biting Klaus’ lower lip, and Klaus has a hand down Mickey’s boxers. Suddenly Ian couldn’t give less of a shit about the mini-bar. He doesn’t even kick the door closed, just falls onto the bed so he can massage his cock watching them.</p><p>Ian loves to see Mickey fall apart under big hands and manhandling. Klaus looks lithe but he’s deceptively strong, able to push Mickey where he wants him. Ian waits patiently until Klaus is thrusting steadily into Mickey, his husband’s hands stretched up and clinging to the headboard. He’s horny as hell, but he doesn’t want to miss a single moment of this outsider angle of Mickey shuddering from the pleasure of bottoming. Seeing all of Mickey like this, it’s the kind of thing that would have Ian wanting to record him and his husband, except for how the idea of making a porn is a trigger for them both, considering the last time.</p><p>Only when Ian’s gotten a few minutes of Mickey getting satisfied does he place both hands on Klaus’ bubble butt and pull his cheeks apart. Ian ends up on top of both of them, fucking Klaus into Mickey. Good thing his husband is strong; he can handle the weight of two well built men.</p><p>They come pretty close together, a sign of well synced sex. Ian pulls out first, then Klaus, and then Ian lays on the right side beside Mickey and kisses him back down to earth, with a little ass grope for his trouble. Klaus reacts with the exact right amount of detachment, leaning in for a single kiss of his own and stroking a sweaty hand over a patch of skin or two, but mostly letting them have their moment.</p><p>“If it’s all the same to you two,” Klaus says after a while, “I think I’m going to sleep here. Don’t worry, it’s not a scam. You can make sure to tell front desk it’s only one night, no extensions. I just, I don’t know who’s going to be home, but one of them is bound to be awake, and that’s six different conversations I don’t want to have.”</p><p>Ian and Mickey take that as their cue to graciously leave. Ian wants to shower, and smoke a bowl, and get into bed with Mickey, in that order. Mickey’s definitely about to get restless, unless he gets some privacy to be his stripped down self. Pretty much the most polite thing Klaus could have done was ask them to go. Klaus walks them to the entryway, leans down to give them each one last kiss as a goodbye, and closes the door. Ian holds Mickey’s hand down the empty hallway, giving one last glance towards the hotel room before the elevator comes. He thinks they’ll be messaging him again, one of the rare men who get seconds. There’s just something about Klaus that says you need more, that says once is never enough.</p>
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